


The Matter at Hand

by cofax



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Aliens Make Them Do It, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-23
Updated: 2009-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel and Vala get stranded off-world.  Stuff happens.  Co-written by Jonquil.  Season 9, just prior to "Beachhead".   Fairly explicit, with some consent issues of the AMTDI type.  Beta by Minnow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Matter at Hand

"Oh, that's just _great_," Daniel snarls as the shimmering pool of the wormhole disappears with a pop inaudible at this distance. "This is all your fault, you know," he continues, glaring at Vala, but there's no time to argue responsibility: the Administrators of the Yllarian Brotherhood have spotted them, and they have to dive into the bushes.

Despite the somewhat constricting nature of her--well, he supposes it could be called a shirt--despite limited mobility, Vala beats him to the top of the ridge, kicking shale and fallen leaves down into Daniel's face with every step.

"What do you mean, it's _my_ fault?" Vala asks, grabbing his hand and yanking him to cover behind a fallen log as a fireball passes uncomfortably close. Whatever weaponry the Yllarian Brotherhood is using, it isn't Goa'uld technology; Daniel's just glad they've got aim as bad as most Jaffa, and no access to projectile weapons.

Gasping for breath from the sprint up the ridge, Daniel rolls his eyes. "It wasn't me who decided to steal the Icon of Grateful Longing from the temple grounds. It wasn't Teal'c who, when confronted, tried to _seduce_ the Senior Brother. It wasn't Colonel Mitchell who--"

Vala shrugs nonchalantly. "A girl's gotta look out for herself. Besides, I think it could be useful," she adds with a pointed look. To Daniel's annoyance, she isn't even breathing hard.

He leans over cautiously and peers downhill; no luck. "C'mon," he says, and grabs her arm. "They're still after us."

She looks out, too, swears in a dialect he's _never_ heard before, sounds vaguely Asgard, but the sibilants are all wrong --and where did she learn that in between being just some kid on a rural planet and being snaked and tortured--and then they're off again, careening down the other side of the ridge into the next valley, ricocheting off the boles of pine trees and just barely not rolling all the way down to the river twinkling at the bottom.

An hour later, he thinks they've finally shaken the Brotherhood, who are awkward with their large crossbows and easy to spot with their flowing yellow capes. "No capes!" he mutters, and shakes his head when Vala raises an eyebrow. If Jack were here... if Jack were here, he admits, they'd never have split up in the Temple. And Jack would never have left two of his people behind, not like that. Not that it is Mitchell's fault, Daniel is forced to admit--the Brotherhood is out for blood and even P90s run out of cartridges after a while. SG-1 will be back for him. For them, he amends reluctantly. They just have to survive until rescue arrives.

Vala lets go of the tree branch she'd been peering over, and slumps back onto the ground next to Daniel. As he watches, she pulls her pack around to the front and dives inside, taking out a water bottle, a Power Bar she sneers at, and then an awkward bundle wrapped in a spare T-shirt.

Unwrapped, the Icon of Grateful Longing is a dull wooden disk, chipped and battered. It might have been lovely once; there is still some color in the chipped enamel on the sides, shaped into ornate blocky glyphs Daniel doesn't recognize.

"Well," says Vala skeptically, and spins it once in the air before catching it with a solid thump. "Hardly seems worth all the fuss. But I bet," she adds, cheering up, "I could pawn it off on Zoltan. He once bought the Sacred Rock of Dahl."

Daniel knows better than to ask, but he does. "Which you picked up in a parking lot?"

She winks. "Nope. A fishbowl."

Daniel closes his eyes and lets his head thunk back against the bole of the tree. SG-1 better arrive _soon_. His eyes fly open when a hand slides over his chest; he grabs Vala's hand just as it slips into his breast pocket.

"Back off."

"Inventory."

"Of _what_, exactly?"

She snorts. "Please. It isn't as if I started with your belt. Give me your pack; we need to see what we've got. Unless your lovely friends are going to show up before nightfall?"

"I'll check my own belongings, thanks. Anything you touch has a habit of winding up yours."

"Not yet, but I'm working on it."

Their joint resources are meager. His standard supplies: a few MREs, two Power Bars, a space blanket, medkit, journal, flashlight, spare clip for the now-lost Beretta; her zat (which he pockets over her objections), water, spare shirt, hairbrush, something exiguous that he fears is underwear, a couple of small pots he really doesn't want to know about. He's afraid they're from the Goa'uld equivalent of the Kama Sutra, but they're probably cosmetics and perfume.

"Where's the other Power Bar?"

"I ate it."

"It was there a minute ago."

"I'm a fast eater."

Daniel opens his mouth to snap that this is not the time to waste their resources, and then pauses. They're going to have to get along at least for a couple of days, until the Brotherhood backs off the Stargate or the SGC sends someone through for them.

So he just grunts and wraps himself in the space blanket.

Vala, of course, doesn't take the hint. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? We can't just go back to the Stargate; we're going to have to lie low for a while."

She frowns prettily. "How long is a while?"

He's saved from having to answer that when his radio crackles. "Jackson! You there?"

Daniel swats Vala's hand away just in time. "We're here, Colonel." He waves at Vala, pointing out towards the open land. She stares at him for a moment, gives him the same petulant cock of her head that he last saw on Cassie Fraiser, and then rolls her eyes and crawls back into the shrubs to keep watch.

"What's your status?" Mitchell's voice is thin and staticky; Daniel suspects that if they'd run any farther he wouldn't have picked up the transmission at all.

"We're holed up in the next valley to the west. We're okay, but the Brotherhood were all over the Stargate behind you, and they know we didn't escape."

"Hell, yeah, those boys are still there. Did a job on the MALP we just sent through."

Daniel winces; this is the third MALP to be damaged since Jack left the mountain. General Landry is beginning to learn the reasons behind the SGC's outsized budget.

"So what's the plan, Colonel?"

"Well..."

Daniel sighs. "We stay out of sight until the Brotherhood gives up."

Vala swivels her head around and stares at him over her ass. "That's the plan?" she says in a furious whisper. "Oh, brilliant."

"Sorry, Jackson," says Mitchell across seven hundred light-years. "We just don't have the resources to mount an all-out assault, and frankly--"

"I know," says Daniel, glaring at Vala, who clutches the Icon protectively. "They were in the right."

Vala crosses her arms in disgust. "You people just don't know how hard it is--"

"Okay, then." Mitchell is still talking, blissfully unaware of Vala's chatter. "So, we're gonna let things cool down for you as much as we can. We're not even going to dial the Stargate for another 48 hours, so they'll think they scared us away, and maybe back off. Can you stay out of sight that long?"

Daniel raises an eyebrow at Vala; she raises one right back. He sighs. "We can try."

"Right. Good luck, Jackson, we'll call again in two days." The radio goes dead.

Vala smiles brightly, all indignation gone. "You think they have anything valuable in any of the _other_ temples?"

Daniel drops his head into his hands. When he raises it, she's still there, worse luck. "If 'is it valuable' weren't the first question out of your mouth, we wouldn't be in this position!"

She tosses her head, then frowns. "So we're stuck here."

"Looks that way."

"Let's go look for a friendly village; I suppose a luxury hotel is out of the question ---"

"Thanks to _you_ and your thieving hands, any bed is out of the question. You're not welcome here, or didn't you get that idea from the idiots in the yellow capes?" He doesn't want to know what the Brotherhood would do if they catch them: enraged religious zealots rarely treat you to tea and cake. And he can't begin to think of a way to return the Icon that doesn't result in catastrophe.

"I could put my hair up." She grabs it in both hands and mimes an upsweep.

"You could put your head up, and somebody would shoot it off, and I'd be home free."

She cocks her head to one side. "You're childish when you're angry." She grins. "It's adorable, but we haven't got time for that now. I have to admit, the current misunderstanding"--he snorts--"probably limits our options. If we cut cross-country into the more rural farms, nobody will have heard about us. This planet doesn't have radio scanning or communications--they'd have been using them to hunt us. "

He'd like to argue with her on general principle, but she's right. Yllaria is yet another in a long series of planets stuck in a quasi-feudal stage of development: no technology much past the medieval period, barring (of course) modern weaponry in the hands of the priesthood. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to him, as this isn't a Goa'uld-ruled world (they got the address off Jack's download, not the Abydos cartouche), but then Earth-based anthropology hasn't developed any theories for addressing interstellar cultural transmission. Yet.

"Fine, then," he grunts, and pushes himself to his feet. "Let's get moving."

The sun is dropping dangerously low when they emerge from the thicket, Vala picking irritably at the leaves caught in her hair--and other places, Daniel notices, before looking away. They're at the end of a small valley, its sides gradually growing steeper between the ridges shouldering down from the mountains to the north. It's still relatively warm, but the wind has a disturbing edge to it, and Daniel wonders if they'll have to build a fire before the night is over. He turns in a slow circle, trying to think strategically. West is the Stargate; north is the mountain; south are the villages, and the Brotherhood.

"This way," announces Vala, and nods due east, at the steep ridge looming above them.

At least she's not entirely devoid of sense; Daniel shrugs and follows her as she weaves confidently through the scrub.

After an hour or so, he calls a halt in a small clearing left by the fall of a lightning-struck tree. She slumps to the ground and leans her back against a tree trunk. He looks around and spots a suitable evergreen. "Give me a hand here."

She grins. "Anywhere you want."

Dear God, does she never drop a subject? "I want a leg up this tree. I might be able to see something."

"Your foot wasn't really what I had in mind, but...." She shrugs and rises daintily to her feet. She makes a stirrup for him and he manages to grab the lowest limb. The rough bark on the limb gives him enough support for him to push against Vala's surprisingly strong hands and get his upper body up and over the branch. From there it's just a matter of swinging one foot up. He's got his right knee hooked around the branch and is trying to reach the next when he hears her voice: "This angle is good for you, you know."

"Will you SHUT UP? We're supposed to be hiding!"

"Daniel, darling, a blind cave-fish could hear the amount of noise you make when you move."

He sets his jaw and grimly continues. When he's as high as the boughs will support him, he looks out through the tree-tops. There's a village within a couple of klicks, but they can't afford to be seen. The village is surrounded by fields, but at the boundaries of the cultivated land the land is regrowing into scrub, as if farms had failed. Across the valley, deep in the scrub, he spots a few rundown buildings--maybe a deserted farm. It looks isolated enough that they could hide undetected. He climbs down.

"I think I've found someplace we can hide for the night."

She raises a grime-smudged eyebrow. "Is there a spa?" Vala has conceived a deep and abiding attachment for the jacuzzi and steam rooms on Level 17.

He snorts. "Of course. And did I mention the convenient ice rink?" She grins wryly, rises to her feet, and they head off toward the scrubland.

Seen up close, the bigger building has long since collapsed and been scavenged down to the stone supports; it offers nothing resembling shelter. "There's a barn over there still standing." Daniel points to a small stone structure, barely visible in the twilight.

Her head lifts. "That's not a barn, it's a smokehouse. No windows, no chimney." She stands up and strides around it, beating the bounds. "The door's long gone, and the hams with it. Pity." She pokes her head inside and sneezes. "Ugh. It won't keep the wind off, but it will stop the rain. Probably the best we can do." She disappears inside.

When he catches up with her, she's wrapped herself in his space blanket--of course--and slumped against the wall. "Don't just sit there--we have work to do."

"What, rebuild modern civilization using just our bare hands and a spoonful of naquadah?" She doesn't move, just pulls the edges of the blanket a little more closely around her shoulders.

"We can at least make this place more comfortable. A fire, for starters. It's getting chilly."

She shivers. "This is a smokehouse, designed to keep the smoke in. Do you really want to be wood-cured?"

"That's what makes it perfect! If we build a small fire indoors, the light won't give us away."

Vala yawns elaborately. "If you want a fire, you build it; I'm just as happy not smelling like ash for the next week. That stuff stays in your hair forever." She hunches her shoulder and turns away from him, closing the conversation. "Suit yourself."

He goes outside and gathers supplies. Kindling and dry limbs are easy enough to find, though he keeps checking over his shoulder, and he returns with an armload. Vala is an unresponsive lump in the corner. He builds a small fire in the center of the stone floor, under the smoke hole. Considers briefly that one of them should sit up and keep watch, and recognizes reluctantly that no way in hell is it going to happen. Then he turns to Vala and nudges her with one foot. It isn't a kick, just a nudge. He has to repeat it before she opens one eye.

"Yes?"

"That's MY blanket."

She dimples. "We can share."

He'd like to say 'no', but he can't quite; the temperature is dropping fast. "My blanket, my rules. Get up and move closer to the fire."

She pulls back. "I like it here." She opens her arms invitingly.

He takes advantage and snatches the blanket, moves closer to the fire, and lies down, stashing the zat carefully inside his jacket. She doesn't join him. "Oh, for pity's sake, stop sulking. Come on. You can have the warm side." He waves one arm toward the gap between himself and the fire pit. There is a long pause before she stands up. Much to his surprise, she doesn't take him up on the offer; instead she lies down at his back and snuggles half-heartedly. Maybe she's not selfish down to the bone.

He has almost drifted off when there's a loud pop from the fire; a spark skitters across the floor, vanishing before it reaches them. Before he has time to think, Vala is halfway to the door, staring at the fire as if it held a vengeful victim of her latest con. Daniel blinks. "It's just a cinder. Go to sleep."

She settles back next to him; mercifully, she doesn't try anything. He closes his eyes and tries not to wonder how the situation would be different if Jack hadn't moved to Washington. He can feel sleep tugging him down--but suddenly he's jerked to awareness when Vala rolls over, murmuring "No! Not again!"

Oh, of course. She's been burned to death--twice. _Once burned, twice shy,_ the old proverb says. What happens when you're twice burned? There isn't anything he can do, and his head is spinning with exhaustion; he falls asleep to her whispered mutters and the soft crackle of the dying fire.

Something pokes him in the arm. Daniel groans and rolls over. What happened to his--oh. Right. He levers his eyes open, expecting to see challenging grey eyes and tumbled dark hair.

Instead he looks into the face of a complete stranger. "Aaahhh--"

The middle-aged man scowls and backs away, but keeps the stick he poked Daniel with raised threateningly. "You better get out." He's not the same phenotype as most of the Yllarians they've met since they arrived, who all are dark-haired, with olive complexions. This man looks like he comes from the streets of Aberdeen or Dublin, with his freckles and the shock of auburn hair.

During the night, the zat has slipped down and around, and is now jabbing Daniel in the kidney; there's no way to get it out quickly or unobtrusively. Daniel opts for the non-threatening response. "Um, Vala?" Daniel elbows her. Jack and Teal'c would never let themselves get caught sleeping.

Vala claws her hair out of her face and grumbles into a sitting position. "What _is_ it now? Can't a girl get her--oh." She simpers, but it loses something with her face mashed kind of sideways from sleeping on the dusty floor, and her hair all clumped up. "Ah, sorry? This your place?"

The man frowns at her and turns his gaze back to Daniel. "You better get out now. I can't have you found here. You're unclean."

Unclean? Daniel opens his mouth to ask, but their reluctant host waves the stick at them. He doesn't look like he wants to answer any questions. At least he didn't just kill them in their sleep: he's really being very generous. So instead of forcing the issue, Daniel gathers up their gear, what little they have, and shoves it into his pack. Vala carefully stows her things, pats her bodice comfortingly--she can't have stashed the Icon in there, can she?--and in less than sixty seconds they are out the door.

Pausing one last time to apologize, Daniel meets the man's distrustful face, shrugs, and decides there's no harm in asking. "I know you can't help us, but--do you know where we can hide? Just for a few days."

"Daniel!" hisses Vala, outraged. Jack wouldn't have approved, either, but the man could have reported them to the Brotherhood, and chose not to.

Daniel waits, while the man grimaces, hand flexing on his stick. After several long breaths, he spits at the ground and shrugs. "Nowhere to hide. Just stay off the mountain. Enkoli 'll kill ya for sure."

"Enkoli?" But he'll answer no more questions, and Vala grabs Daniel by the strap of his pack, towing him into the forest. At least they didn't have to shoot anyone this time. And shooting was kind of antithetical to the whole "hiding out" plan, anyway.

"What are Enkoli, do you think?" Daniel wonders.

Vala just shrugs. "I don't know and I don't care to know, if they're going to kill me. So, where now?" She holds a branch back for him.

He takes it with an absent nod, thinking. "Well, we've still got 36 hours to go before the next radio contact, and I'm not sure the Brotherhood will back off the gate anytime soon. I think the best move is to get over one more ridge, out of the more settled areas. Even this area is a bit too crowded for us to stay hidden for long." He waves off to the south, where they can see a village in the valley below through a thin screen of trees.

"Well, that's all well and good," Vala says, "but what are we going to do for _food_? Unless you know which of these roots is good to eat and which is poisonous?" She gives the path they are following, and the woods around them, a dissatisfied glare. "I'm certainly not going without food for days."

"No, I don't suppose you are," says Daniel. "Wish I knew where you put it, though," he mutters, as he follows along behind her admittedly shapely backside. The woman eats more than _Teal'c_ does, but is as slim and athletic as any--

_Oh, no._ He catches himself. Just because she's pretty, and, well, occasionally entertaining--she is _dangerous_. He should be on Atlantis by now, sending reports back to Jack about all the cool toys he's found. Not trudging through the mud on yet another quasi-medieval planet, running from religious fanatics. It's Her Fault, and he isn't going to forget it.

Vala cheerfully ignores his glares, as usual. Instead she's pulled her pack around to the front and fumbles in it. She is already eating when Daniel identifies the sound. "Hey, that's my--!" But by the time he's pulled her to a stop and spun her around, the rest of the PowerBar is crammed into her mouth. She gives him a big toothless smile.

"I hate you," he mutters, and pushes in front. They are definitely going to need more food soon.

  


*

  
"They're coming!" Daniel hisses. "Come on!"

Vala grunts quietly, her legs kicking against his ribs as she strains to reach the counter. "Al-most there..."

Skinny she may be: but she isn't light. It's an uncomfortable position, and Daniel's hold on her knees is beginning to slip. "Now!" He can hear voices from the front of the house.

"Got it!" Vala whispers. "Pull me up!"

It takes two tries and a soft _thunk_ as Vala bangs her elbow against the wall, before she is out of the high window and crouched next to him. He doesn't give her time to complain, just grabs her free hand and tows her across the yard and deep into the shadows behind the barn.

When they are safely away, huddled in a ditch under a toppling pine tree, Vala pulls her hand away and glares at him. "That hurt," she complains, rubbing her elbow.

"Fine," he said, and reaches around her for the sack she carried in the other hand. "Next time I'll drop you when I hear the owners returning."

Dark and crusty bread, a little stale; a lump of greasy cheese; and three apples. Daniel takes the biggest one. It's beginning to wither, but he doesn't care. They've been running all day, trying to get into deeper cover, and they keep getting turned back. It's increasingly frustrating, and, he has to admit, more than a little dangerous. The only way out of the settled area is to head north up into the mountains where the terrain is both open and rough; but he's beginning to think it's safer than the game they've been playing. Their next radio contact is in about twelve hours; he suspects the news won't be good.

"But without me," Vala points out sweetly, "who would know how to open these locked doors for you? And then," she lifts his hand and takes a bite out of the apple while he holds it, "you'd starve."

He glares; she smiles, her mood restored.

  


*

  
While she is in the bushes "conducting personal business," as she calls it archly, Daniel extracts the Icon from her pack. In the growing light, the patterns on the side are tantalizingly familiar, but mostly illegible. He tilts it sideways, trying to angle it so the light emphasizes the shadows in the soft etchings. "Bear..." he thinks he sees, but even that he's not sure of. It could be the Goa'uld word for "weapon", or even "pride-of-place." He puts it down on his knee and turns to dig his journal out of his pack. At the least he can get _something_ useful done on this damned escapade--

"Hey!"

But Vala's three feet away already, her eyes narrowed. "You can't have it," she announces, and stows the Icon carefully inside her top, where it makes a lump. Daniel's suddenly reminded of what Sam used to call the "uni-boob" look; Vala's apparently committed to developing the "tri-boob".

"I don't _want_ it," he says, despite the itching of his palms, and re-stows his notebook with a sigh. "I just want to see what it is. To read the writing--"

She flashes outrage. "So you can take it from me, and use it for a weapon!"

It's not as though he hasn't been tempted, but he sighs and tries, for once, to reason with her. "I'm an archaeologist, Vala--figuring out artifacts is what I do."

"It's mine."

"Fine, it's yours. Can we eat now?"

The last MRE is shared in petulant silence on her part, and exhausted resentment on his. "First watch?" Daniel finally asks, after the empty packages have been buried, and the dawn bird song replaced with the scritch and chatter of insects in full summer.

"You do it," she says, her lower lip teetering dangerously towards a pout. "I'm tired."

"I had first watch yesterday afternoon," he says mildly. She just glares. "Okay, um, let's throw for it."

She brightens: the one thing he's learned about Vala Mal Doran in all of this is her love for gambling. "Best two out of three!"

He loses: she always throws paper to his rock, and he wonders if maybe he's getting predictable in his old age. It's barely an hour later, though, and he's doing pushups just to keep himself awake, when the radio mutters to life. Mitchell's voice is thin with distance and pocked with lost syllables. "SG-1-Niner to Jackson. Come in, Jackson."

Daniel scrambles upright and grabs for the radio. Vala hasn't stirred; he keeps his voice down. "I'm here, Colonel." They're early: what's happened?

"Doing okay out there?"

"Okay, though we've had a few near-misses. We're running low on food, too." They've stretched it as far as they could, but SG-1 was near the end of their mission when Vala made her appallingly ill-conceived move at the temple. As a result they had little enough to begin with, and the bread and cheese are long gone.

"Sorry we can't do anything about that."

"Yeah, I know. So, what are our chances for rescue?"

There's a long pause; Daniel looks up to see Vala's eyes open, brightly attentive. She raises an eyebrow as they wait out Mitchell's uncomfortable hesitation.

"Well, it's like this. Turns out SG-7 brought a bug back from Pissel--Persel--"

"Persepolis, Colonel. And let me guess: you're on lockdown?" Oh, Landry must be loving this. _Welcome to the SGC,_ Daniel thought. _Travel to distant planets, meet interesting people, get sick in a thousand new and horrible ways._

An audible sigh travels seven hundred light years. "Got it in one. It's not fatal--so far--but it's pretty damned uncomfortable."

A smile slides across Vala's face. Daniel shakes his head but bites back a grin in response. "Are you and Teal'c okay?"

"Sure, if you don't count waiting behind seventeen airmen to get to the head." Mitchell's voice is rueful. "At any rate," his voice sharpens to professionalism, "currently we've got two teams trapped off-world, counting you. Dixon's team is in the infirmary on IV fluids, and SGs 8 and 11 are on leave. And Doctor Lam won't let anyone on or off-base until she's got a cure for this identified."

Vala's grin slips away. "We're stuck here? It's obvious the Tau'ri reputation is entirely undeserved. "

Daniel ignores her, by now a well-worn habit. "So we're on our own."

"Fraid so. Can you make it? We could try to contact the Tok'ra or ask Garak for help--" But Mitchell's voice is dubious, and Daniel's well aware of the logistical and political problems either of those options would cause. So he raises an eyebrow at Vala: can we?

She scowls in disgust, but nods reluctantly.

"We'll manage, Colonel," says Daniel. "We've kept out of sight so far. Any idea how long it'll be?"

There's a long pause: Mitchell must be conferring with someone, probably Doctor Lam or the General. "At least two or three days, I'm told. But if you get a chance at the gate, take it and go to the Alpha site: Redfield says they're clean."

"Will do."

"Good luck, Jackson, and I'm sorry. SGC out." There's a soft click as the radio goes dead, and then there's nothing, just the wind in the trees, and the song of one of the many little brown birds Daniel can't tell apart.

Vala rolls over, flashing a bit of cleavage, and flings her arms dramatically to the side, one hand slapping Daniel on the hip. "We're _stuck_ here! I cannot believe you people!"

"Any complaints you have, I'm happy to take up with the management," he replies sourly, relocating her hand. "Besides, I'm sure Major Dixon's team is very upset about not being able to come to your rescue."

"Dixon?" Her attention is caught. "Isn't Dixon the one with the--" she spreads her two hands about ten inches apart, eyes glittering with enthusiasm. Whoever introduced her to the Marines should be _shot_.

  


*

  
Two days pass in a haze of low-grade panic, intersected by hours of bored frustration. They sleep in snatches, shift on and shift off, huddled together under the single blanket. The bracelets are gone, but they stay within thirty feet of each other at all times. Daniel's not sure whether that's fear, habit, or an acknowledgement that now is not the time to test their limitations.

Hunger is a constant companion, complicated by the growing sense that the locals are watching for them. They've narrowly escaped being spotted three times in the last twenty-four hours, once only by hiding in a swamp Daniel suspects is downstream of the village's public latrines. Vala grouses about the smell for the next three hours; he retaliates by translating Abydonian proverbs into Mandarin in his head and tunes her out completely.

"Stop!" A sharp pinch on his arm brings him back to full awareness. They're on the edge of another open field: this one supports a root crop with bright orange flowers. It's not a plant Daniel is familiar with, and he wonders if it's worth the risk to steal some and try eating them raw. They haven't had a fire since that first night; their current situation makes the dingy smokehouse seem a Marriott by comparison.

Daniel wants nothing more than to collapse under a tree and lapse into a coma for twelve hours. Instead he shrugs Vala's hand off his arm and looks around warily. "Why'd we come this way? I thought we were heading up the valley."

"Because I'm starving and tired and there's no food at that end of the valley." Vala's managed to brush off the worst of the mud, but Daniel suspects the corset will never recover. The look on her face isn't one he's seen much of: exhaustion has dimmed even her bright self-involvement, and there's no pretense in the way she pushes a lock of hair behind one ear.

"I don't know," he says reluctantly. "We're very close to the villages here." If his geography is correct, over the next rise is one of the larger villages. They're only about twenty kilometers from the gate, but it might as well be two hundred; every time they came anywhere near that canyon they spotted one of the Brotherhood's yellow cloaks and had to back off. Someone knows he and Vala are still out here. Doctor Lam better come through with a cure soon.

"Wimp." But it's said without an edge, and she drops to her knees to pull a plant out of the ground. "Taro," she says, curling her lip.

Daniel frowns. "No, it's not," he says automatically. "Taro's a tropical plant, and irrigated--"

"Not taro, whatever that is. Taron." Vala twists the root away from the stalk, revealing a deep purple interior. "It's edible raw, but not pleasant." She hesitates.

"What do you mean unpleasant?" If Vala doesn't want to tell him, he's sure he really needs to know it.

She pats her stomach. "Gas." As if in response, her stomach rumbles loudly enough for Daniel to hear it.

"Oh, that's just _wonderful._"

Then, of course, they see someone emerge from the trees on the other side of the field, and they dodge back into cover. Back up the valley again.

  


*

  
The Brotherhood hasn't given up on them. On their way up the valley, they try again for food, raiding an isolated barn for whatever they can find. Vala's sure they got away with it--but within an hour they both hear the baying, and they realize that Daniel's got a hole in his pack, and they've been leaving a little trail of livestock grain behind them. The day doesn't get any better after that.

There's a shout behind them. They scramble and slide down the slope, shale slipping under their feet, Daniel a little ahead of Vala. As he staggers forward onto level land, he hears a hissed "shit!"; he glances over his shoulder just in time to see her overbalance and fall forward. She sits up, clutching her right arm; he yells, "Go, go, GO!"

She scrambles to her feet and they're off again, crashing through a stream bed. A dim memory of one of Teal'c's stories surfaces, and he begins running upstream, crossing the shallow water every hundred yards or so. The baying grows more distant and eventually dies out, at around the same time that Daniel's wind does.

Vala has lagged behind; Daniel drops to a walk to let her catch him. She doesn't catch up; instead, she slows as well. He reaches back to pull her forward, but she flinches away. They need a place to hole up; just because they may have lost the dogs doesn't meant the Brotherhood's going to give up the hunt.

About a quarter mile up the hill from the creek, a small crag interrupts the smoothly rolling landscape: it's a piece of old rock the size of a city block, thrust up out of the ground like a relic of an earlier age. Halfway up the sloping southern face is a cluster of ancient pines, with a shady pocket in the middle about the size of a small car. It isn't great, but it's shelter, and if the Brotherhood finds them, they can retreat up and over the crest of the hill. Maybe even head up the mountain, despite that vague warning about "Enkoli".

He's been thinking about it occasionally over the last day or so, when he has a moment of quiet. "Enkoli" doesn't resemble any Goa'uld word he knows, and so far as he can tell, it was the Goa'uld who planted humans here, even if they then forgot about the settlement. Before it all went to hell, the Senior Brother had admitted that no one had come through the Stargate in several generations.

Daniel wishes futilely for a fire and digs into his pack for a water bottle. There's got to be a way to convince the Brotherhood they're dead, so they can sneak back to the Stargate. Damn the dogs, anyway. At least they have the horse blanket that Vala stole while he was raiding the manger. Daniel sighs: when Jack hears about this, he's never going to let Daniel live it down. "No, seriously: you ate _goat chow_?"

Vala glares. "A little help here?" She fumbles awkwardly to remove her pack; he slips it off the left shoulder. When he moves the strap off the right, she screams; he drops the pack in shock.

"Can you PLEASE not announce our presence to the entire planet?"

"Can you PLEASE keep your clumsy hands to yourself?." She huddles into herself, right arm cradled to her chest.

"What happened?"

"I fell. But don't worry, it isn't broken, thank you so very much for asking."

He feels a brief flicker of remorse, then remembers that this is all her fault anyway. Still. "Let me see it."

Her eyes narrow with suspicion, but after a moment she uncurls herself and allows him to examine it. There isn't much he can tell without any equipment, but he's pretty sure she's right, and it's not broken. Their options for treatment are limited, though: all he can offer is an Ace bandage and some pain pills from the med kit. She stares at the Vicodin with longing, but takes the aspirin without complaint; neither of them can afford to be put out of commission under the circumstances. When he's done, she flexes her wrist and nods ungraciously.

Night is falling: the wind has dropped along with the temperature. Daniel wastes some water to clean his hands and face, trying not to think about hot showers and roast chicken dinners. He can't really think of anything to say beyond the obvious, and he's tired of sniping. So he sits quietly, looking out over the dark valley, occasionally picking a tiny pine cone out from under his ass. These trees drop a _lot_ of pine cones.

Vala grumbles quietly, pawing clumsily through her pack with her left hand; after a few seconds, she slaps it in disgust and gives up. In the dim light, all he can see of her face is a discontented scowl and the sharp line of her nose.

He sighs. "What do you need?"

"It doesn't matter."

He lets the silence stretch on; as he hoped, she breaks first.

"I want my comb. But I won't be able to use it anyway." She flutters the fingers of her left hand at him.

"I would have thought you could steal with either hand."

She flashes a grin. "I can, but it takes two hands to manage hair."

He smiles reluctantly. "Let me try."

It's Vala, so finding the comb and loosening her pigtails requires a great deal more body contact than anybody else would have found necessary or even possible. They settle with her between his legs, her warm sweaty back pressed into his lower body. With a nudge, Daniel urges her forward a bit so that he can get to the nape of her neck. He slips the tie free and begins unbraiding her hair. It falls free, a long black sheet; she shakes it reflexively, a ripple moving down her body to his.

He tears his focus back to her hair, which is surprisingly cool; it slithers between his fingers. As he separates it into sections, she sighs, dropping her shoulders, and leans back into him. "Mmmm. That feels good."

"That's what my wife always said."

She tries to turn but is brought up short by his hold on her hair. "You have a wife?"

"Had. "

She doesn't take the hint. "You never mentioned that."

"It isn't as if you let me get a word in edgewise." He stops to collect himself; as he thinks, he begins to rebraid absently. "I don't talk about her because there's nothing to say. I met her, I married her, I loved her, she died."

"What happened?"

"Can't you leave _anything_ alone?" He yanks at her hair, but she doesn't respond. Weaving one lock over another, he captures a few stray strands with his pinkie. "She was taken as a host. A couple of years later, Teal'c shot her to save my life."

"Oh." She is silent for a long moment . "I know how that feels. I'm sorry."

He doubts it, but doesn't say so. He finishes the braid, ties it, and pats her back. "You've got first watch: let's rest for a couple of hours and then move. We need to get some more distance between us and the Brotherhood."

  


*

  
From the top of the ridge, crouched in the trees, they can see a gathering in the center of the village. Not just the villagers, either: there's about twenty of the Brotherhood there, the yellow capes vivid even at this distance.

"Oh, perfect," Vala whispers, her breath hot in Daniel's ear. He resists the urge to adjust his stance. "Let's go." She grabs his hand and yanks him toward the steep slope, heading downhill.

"Whoa, wait up a second." He pulls his hand out of her grip. "We're not going down there. Did you see them all?"

Grey eyes roll expressively. "Yes, I did. I saw them all out of their houses and in the central square. Leaving their homes unguarded. You know, where the food is?"

Oh.

"That's--not a bad idea, actually." He stops and peers out at the valley below them, tilting his head to see through the trees. "How close do you think we can get?" He wonders again if it's worth getting laser surgery on his eyes: he's getting tired of replacing his glasses after every other mission, and he's nearly lost this pair twice so far.

"We don't need to get _close_," she says pointedly, and starts downhill again. "We just need to get close enough."

"Right." And whatever qualms he might have are swept away by the thought of eating anything other than the tasteless grain in his pack, and the bitter gas-inducing roots in hers. Even soaked in water, the grain is disastrously hard on his teeth.

This village is built on a gentle slope; the central square shares a shallow terrace with a small temple. As Daniel and Vala approach, slipping along in the shadows of the hedges lining the fields, they can occasionally peek out and see right down the hillside to where all the villagers are still gathered. It's reassuring: even the children and elderly seem to have gone to the square. Which, if he thinks about it, makes Daniel a little nervous. What exactly are they doing?

Vala puts a hand on his arm and points across the lane: they're finally in among the houses. The door on that one looks ajar, and there isn't anyone nearby that Daniel can see. He nods, and motions with his hand: _keep low._ She nods: _yeah, yeah_, and scurries across the lane.

He follows, cautiously, but pauses in the doorway. The soft rumble of voices in the square has solidified, taken shape. They're chanting, he realizes. Something he doesn't recognize: an ancient form of the local language (a bastardized derivation of Basque), maybe , but he can't really tell from here. It makes him nervous: unknown rituals have caused too much trouble in the past for SG-1, and he suspects this is no different. The chanting gets louder, at the same time it gets lower, more threatening. A chill goes down his spine, and he leans into the house to check on Vala.

It's a typical place, like thousands of others he's seen: wattle and daub walls, thatched roof, a hard-packed dirt floor. This family is more wealthy than most, based on the copper pots hanging from the roof and what looks like a door to another room beyond the bed. They don't have any animals living with them, which is always a plus. Vala is at the shelf in the corner, stuffing things into her pack with one hand while she stabilizes the pack with the other, bandaged hand.

"Not too much," he warns. "We don't want them to notice right away--"

"Do I give you advice on translating things? Or on--whatever else it is you do?" She snaps quietly without turning around. "Let's go next door, these people don't have any dried meat."

"Meat!" Daniel hisses. "Vala, we can't--"

She raises an imperious eyebrow and pushes past him in the doorway, making sure her breasts brush against his arm as she does so. "If we're going to keep running, I need pro--" She cuts off, her gaze fixed, looking down the lane at the square.

"What is it?" Daniel peers around the doorsill.

Smoke is rising in the square. He can't see clearly: there's a lot of people gathered, and some of the men have children on their shoulders. A knot of yellow cloaks comes out of the temple and crosses the square; people pull back out of their way, heads bobbing in respect. The smoke is--now he can see its source.

"Oh, no," Daniel says, just as Vala whispers, "Not again."

There is a pyre in the center of the square, unlit wood piled around a post fixed in the ground. Three Brothers hold torches on tall poles; and the Brotherhood are towing someone toward the pyre. A man, it looks like, someone who struggles and shouts. They can't hear his voice, not over the chanting. People are clapping their hands now, too, stamping in rhythm with the chanting.

"Okay, we're leaving now." Daniel turns Vala away from the spectacle, facing her north, towards the safety of the hills. She resists, twisting her head over her shoulder to look back even as he starts pushing her up the lane. He hopes to god they have enough supplies in the pack now, because he's sure as hell not risking--

Her eyes go wide and her hand fixes on his shoulder, squeezing hard enough to bruise. "Daniel!"

He turns, reluctantly. The prisoner has been lashed to the stake. There's a gap in the crowd, and so even at this distance, Daniel can see the man's face, can see the shock of red hair, so unusual on this planet of dark-skinned brunets. The man who'd found them the first day, sleeping in his smokehouse. The man who hadn't killed them, or reported them, just driven them off his land with an ambiguous warning about Enkoli.

And who was apparently being burned alive for his generosity.

"Oh, my god," Daniel mutters, and begins to run, towing Vala towards the edge of the village. There's no rescue for the red-haired man, not one zat against twenty members of the Brotherhood and the entire population of the village. "We have got to get out--"

As they burst out of the lane and into the field, there's a shout, ringing out above the sound of the chanting. It's followed by another one, from another direction, and the flash of a yellow cloak in the trees. The Brotherhood have spotted them.

The rhythm of the chanting fills his ears as they run, or maybe it's just his heart pounding. They make it into the trees without injury, but a fireball hits the bole of a tree behind them as they duck into cover. They scramble desperately, no words needed between them: the only direction now is up, north, away from the villages. But Vala can't climb the steep slope to the ridge as easily with only one sound hand, and as they struggle upwards, sap sticky on their hands and sweat running into their eyes, they hear the sound of dogs behind them.

  


*

  
The Brotherhood isn't letting this one go, and in fact there seem to be more of them. Their options are narrowing, so Daniel and Vala keep pushing north, into the hills, struggling along the forested ridgeline. Daniel's not entirely sure the Brotherhood aren't driving them north: he decides not to mention it to Vala, who banged her injured wrist against a tree in that last dash, and is white-faced with pain.

They've come into a denser stand of trees and they can't see very far, which would be bad, except it means the Brotherhood can't, either. Pausing, Daniel catches Vala's arm and hands her the water bottle. She nods wordlessly and leans against a tree, tipping the plastic bottle above her head to catch the last drop.

This forest is dry: dust clings to every inch of her exposed skin, from the tiny gap between the bottom of her shirt and the waistband of her BDUs, to the sweat-slicked skin under her jaw, glistening as she swallows. Even filthy, sweaty, and in pain, she's--he cuts off the thought, swallows, and looks away. He's got more important things to think about than... that.

He squats down and begins drawing a map in the dirt, thinking. There's something he's missing here; something that could be useful.

"What is it?" Vala asks. She wipes off the top of the bottle and hands it back to him with a smirk.

"I think--" He throws his mind back to that first briefing, when they were reviewing the UAV data before ever coming through the gate to this godforsaken dusty place. The sun is over his left shoulder, and the gate is that way, and the villages that way, so, yeah. "I think there's a set of ruins off that way." He points north and west, just left of where the ridgeline flattens out into what looked, from the open, like a plateau. "You remember? It was something I wanted to see but we got all caught up with the discussions about the Ori, and--" He stops, struck by another thought, and then brings the heel of his hand to his head and thumps himself gently on the forehead once. And then again, harder.

Vala is looking at him blankly. "What? Daniel, what?"

"Enkoli. Incola."

"What's that mean?"

"I think maybe those ruins are Ancient."

Vala blinks at the apparent non sequitur. "And that matters because?"

"Because that guy--" Daniel nods downhill, "--might have been talking about these ruins. In which case there's nothing there to worry about. But if the Brotherhood are afraid of them, maybe they won't follow us."

"They seem pretty determined," she points out with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, well." He straightens up and smoothes the dirt map with the edge of his boot, blurring it into nothingness. "I think the Brotherhood think we're Ori."

She is affronted. "But we came to warn them about the Ori!"

"Yes, and then we stole a holy relic and spent four days dodging their patrols. And, apparently, lured some of their people into apostasy." His voice is not dry enough to drive away the image of the redheaded man's face, surrounded by the yellow of the Brotherhood's capes. "No wonder they're not giving up."

"So we hide in those ruins?" Vala's single-mindedness is occasionally refreshing, he'll grant her that. "You think they'll protect us?"

Stowing the bottle in the pack, he starts moving through the trees again, this time steering a bit to the west. They'll have to be careful to avoid the Brothers who were pursuing them along the valley floor, but if they move fast enough they might make it. "Well, in theory, sure. Unless the reason they think it's dangerous is--"

"--because there's actually something there." Vala curls her lips in disgust. "Well, aren't you just full of optimism?"

"I try," he says, squinting in the wash of sunlight as they cross a small glade. No point in telling her that he's been in worse positions before; so has she. Possibly far more of them, to be fair. "Vala," he says, wondering why it had never occurred to him before to ask, "how long were you a host?"

There is a profound silence from the woman at his side, a silence that sounds like--he realizes with a brush of shame--like Jack's, and like Sam's. The silence of someone who is remembering against her will, against her better judgment. "A long time," she says finally, into the soft thump of their boots on the forest floor.

Daniel suspects he shouldn't push, but he really does want to know. "How long?"

Grey eyes meet his in passing, shadowed by more than the trees about them, and then she shrugs, making her pack swing and bounce against her back. "Long enough that no one remembered my father's name, and my--my lover had grandchildren." She shrugs again, brushing some dust off her jacket with unnecessary force, and then looks up again with a bright smile. "He was an ugly old man, but his grandson, well." She waggles an eyebrow suggestively.

Daniel grimaces at the image, and shakes his head, pursuing the point she's dodging. "So you went back home afterwards? That must have been difficult." Were these the same people she had ruled over as Qeshet, threatening obliteration for any failure to meet the snake's exacting standards? Swap "difficult" out for "horrifying", and that might be closer to the truth, he thinks.

She shrugs again, the glossy mask firmly in place, and looks away from him. "So, how far away is this mythical set of ruins, anyway?"

Daniel takes a breath, not willing to drop the subject, but then the dogs start baying again, closer than before, and they have to start running again.

  


*

  
When they get home, Daniel's going to take about six showers, and then lock himself into his apartment for a week, eating takeout Thai and watching the Food Network. Either Abydos, primitive as it was, was far more comfortable than he remembers, or he's just getting old. Because he's pretty sure he's never been this sore and dirty for this long in his _life_.

"Okay, this is it," he says, crouching in the shelter of a dull red wall, whose stones fit together without more than a fingernail's width between them. On another day, this workmanship could give rise to an impassioned lecture about the value of skilled labor in the pre-industrial economy, and what that says about the local social structure. Today, it just means--he hopes--that there will be enough whole buildings inside the complex to provide them a safe place to hide. He is pretty certain it's not actually an Ancient ruin, but doesn't see any need to point it out to Vala at the moment. "Can you see them?"

Her back pressed against his, Vala nods or shakes her head, he can't tell. "No, there's too many trees. What I'd give for a nice open desert right now," she whispers.

"Where they could see us from a distance and pick us off? Wonderful strategic sense you've got there," mutters Daniel, and gives one more cautious look around before pushing himself to his feet and scrambling over the low wall. Despite the quality of construction, it's very old indeed--the crumbling top is only about four feet above ground level. He reaches back over to help Vala, who gives a pained wince and ignores his proffered hand.

Inside the ruins is much like the outside: unlike other old complexes Daniel has investigated, this one has not kept the world at bay, and trees and brush are everywhere. Some of the ground was once paved, and the stones are lopsided and off-kilter, pushed apart by tree roots and covered with many years of soil and forest debris. He finds himself wishing for a GPS unit and survey equipment, and then reminds himself that their survival beyond the next three minutes is in no way guaranteed. They may well be trapped.

If Teal'c and Mitchell were here, he could leave the strategic thinking to them, but they're not. He knows who to blame for that, but when he slits his eyes resentfully at Vala, he finds he's lost most of the edge of his anger. She's on the last of the aspirin but it doesn't look like it's doing much good: the cheeky grin is nowhere to be seen. "Which way?" she asks quietly, looking around appraisingly at the jumbled stones and rough terrain.

A hound bays in the distance; they both twitch, shoulders brushing. Daniel considers for a long moment. It's not an Ancient ruin, he's sure of that now by the workmanship and the architecture, so the chances are slim they'll find any technology to protect themselves with. What they need to do is go deep, somewhere the Brotherhood would never find them. He takes a few steps forward, staying on the stones: they can at least try not to leave too clear a trail.

Five steps in, the stone beneath him cants sideways suddenly, throwing him off balance. "Aaah!" He stumbles, and Vala wrenches him to safety as the slab pivots, revealing a pit beneath, into which a few lumps of soil and gravel tumble. The stone slab settles back into place as Daniel watches, breathing heavily. In a moment there's no indication of anything amiss, just a section of old pavement on the ground, dusted with fallen leaves. "Uh, wow."

Whoever the builders of this complex were, they'd left it booby-trapped. Vala lets go of his arm and smiles broadly. "Oh, this is going to be _fun!_"

There's a pattern to the booby-traps, Daniel decides; he's just not sure what it is. He manages to avoid the next three as they push farther into the ruins, still looking for a good hiding place, but the fourth nearly crushes him under a suddenly-toppling wall. Again, it's Vala's sharp eyes that spot the incongruity and pull him out of the way. "Ah, thanks," he says, coughing out a lungful of dust.

She ignores him, staring at the rubble around them with a wisely suspicious eye. "The Yllarians didn't build this."

He rolls an eye at her, but she's ignoring him, tracing a hand along the still-sharp edge of a block in the wall. "Other than the obvious, what makes you think that?"

Her braids toss as she shrugs, knocking some dust off her jacket. "It's wrong? Look, look at that corner there, and the way the stones curve in that archway."

Daniel follows her pointing finger to one of the few buildings still mostly standing, and nods after a moment. She's not wrong: there's something indefinably off about the shapes and angles here, something utterly inconsistent with the staid and far-too-familiar Yllarian architecture. "Huh."

He's about to follow up on that thought when there's a shout in the distance, and another. In the distance, but not the far distance: the Brotherhood has entered the ruins. More shouts now, from the left--they're being flanked. Daniel's not sure how big the complex is, but they have to find a place to hide, out of reach of the dogs. They don't have the stamina to play hide-and-seek with the Brotherhood for long. Not and keep evading the damned booby-traps set by the city's unknown builders.

"Okay, shit."

"I have an idea." Vala's face is pale, but she tugs him forward, heading across the small open plaza, stepping cautiously on the untrustworthy flagstones. Daniel pulls the zat out of his pocket as the shouts increase in volume; he finds it only vaguely reassuring that the Yllarians don't have radio technology. If there's enough of the Brotherhood here, they'll be caught eventually.

The next stone is one of the balanced ones: Vala weights it gingerly, then steps back to let it swing. Daniel catches a glimpse of nothingness beneath it, and then it settles back into place. "So?"

She stares at him meaningfully, then points down at the stone.

"Oh, no." They have no idea what's down there--stakes, snakes, mud pits, all sorts of nasty things. Daniel's worked at the SGC for far too long and he's seen too many mission reports to be sanguine about conditions in an old booby-trapped cave. He's not going down there; he folds his arms and glares at Vala.

She starts to fold her arms, winces, and pouts instead. But it seems half-hearted, and her eyes keep flickering over his shoulder, watching for the telltale flash of a yellow cloak. "Do we have any other options?" she hisses.

"No, but--" Daniel stops, raises a hand, and puts it over her mouth. She opens her eyes wide in inquiry, then nods as he pulls her down into a crouch.

"Capes?" she mouths soundlessly; he nods.

Now, of course, they have no choice: there is a Brother walking through the trees, his fire staff at the ready, not thirty yards away. He's not looking toward them, but almost any noise would get his attention. Daniel squats carefully and pushes down on the flagstone, his hands slick on its cool, smooth surface.

It tilts, soundlessly, as if it were oiled. _Weird._ The darkness below it is impenetrable, but it looks like there's enough room for them to fit inside. If they're careful. Daniel heaves a little harder and the other side swings up, just high enough. He raises an eyebrow at Vala, who bites her lip and swings her legs into the hole. There's a soft grunt and a rustle as she squirms backwards, dirt falling onto her face and hair.

It takes all his effort to keep the stone lifted, so Daniel can't help lower her in, and he realizes her sprained wrist is going to be a problem only when she suddenly lets go of the lip and disappears from view. He hears a thump, and she mutters something in Goa'uld about the thirteenth pit of Netu.

The Brother has been joined by a second one: they are waving their arms around, and pointing in various directions, clearly arguing about the search. Daniel grimaces and edges his feet into the opening. He has to switch around so he can push _up_ on the slab instead of down, and it's damned heavy. One hand slips, and it lurches downward, nearly pinning him in place, half into the pit and half out.

"Daniel!" hisses Vala from below. Something grabs his foot, and he nearly cries out in alarm before realizing it has to be Vala.

One of the Brothers begins to turn. Daniel heaves desperately at the slab, shoving it upwards so he can swivel around and let himself fall into the darkness.

  


*

  
Daniel doesn't fall far, but he lands heavily, stumbling sideways into Vala with a grunt he tries to stifle. Before he's regained his balance, the slab has settled back into place. It's completely lightless in here.

He turns around cautiously, arms outspread. On two sides his fumbling hands touch cold smooth stone; the other walls are a crumbled mass of rubble and dirt, as if a tunnel entrance had collapsed at some point. The entire space is about the size of his bathroom, but the floor is uncertain with loose rock. He trips as a stone turns under his foot, and finds himself folded over Vala, her sharp elbow jutting into his stomach.

"Ooof," he manages softly. "Sorry. You okay?" Straightening is hard, in the darkness with the unstable surface. He finds himself pressed close against her, his front to her back. She's tall, but still shorter than he is: her hair catches in his face and he brushes it away.

"Fine," she says shortly, her voice muffled, and he realizes she's shaking. Tiny tremors, noticeable only because they're tangled together. He rests a hand cautiously on her shoulder.

Five days of running, starvation, and people shooting at them, and _now_ she's scared? Now she has time to be scared.

There's a shout above them, and the sound of boots stomping on hard stone carries clearly down into their cubbyhole. It sounds like dozens of Brothers are up there, and if they bring the dogs--

Vala shudders. "Daniel--" she whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear her.

He pats her shoulder, not above shuddering himself, truth be told. Of all the unpleasantnesses he's experienced since opening the Stargate, dealing with religious zealots is the worst. He's never been good with situations where reason has no foothold--this particular circumstance being one of them.

"They're going to _burn_ us, Daniel..."

"No, they won't. I won't--" But he's broken that promise already, hasn't he?

They stand there, and somehow his arms find their way around her, so she's leaning against him, warm in the dank cold of the pit, cave, whatever it is. She doesn't shrug him off, as he half-expected she would--but that could make noise. The sound of the search above them continues, trails off, gains in volume again. From the sound of it, the Brotherhood has set up their center of operations in the middle of the plaza, no more than thirty feet away.

The pit smells of dirt and water, of cold stone and tree roots; but Vala's hair smells of dust, sweat, and a tiny hint of perfume. She smells alive. He wonders again what those tiny pots contain, and almost draws breath to ask, when she twists in his arms, swiveling around to face him. He drops his arms as she turns, but she hooks her arms behind his back, tucking herself in under his chin.

"Well," she says softly after a moment, as his eyes search the darkness fruitlessly. "This is cozy." There's a wicked smile curled into those words, and he can't help but roll his eyes. She pats his ass; Daniel twitches, but there's not much he can do without making any noise.

Which is, of course, when the buzzing starts.

_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttt_, it sounds. It's very soft--at first. But as Daniel stands in stunned disbelief, the pitch, and the volume, begin to climb.

"What is it?" he whispers, and she shakes her head, pushing him away to grab at her pack. He stumbles back against the wall and bats at his radio, but it's not that.

There's nothing in his pack or in the pockets of his vest that could be making the noise, and now that he's a little ways away from her, he realizes the sound is definitely coming from her. From the sound of it, she's realized this as well--but the pitch, and the volume, of the buzzing is beginning to increase. And the Brotherhood are still there, not fifteen feet above their heads, walking around with their yellow capes and their nasty firebolt-throwing-staves.

"Where, where?" Vala mutters, and rips open a velcro tab: Daniel winces.

The sound is still climbing. Desperate, Daniel lunges forward and grabs her: one hand lands on her shoulder, the other on her breast.

He'd apologize, except there's something under his hand that really shouldn't be. It's been a while, but he's pretty sure women's breasts aren't _hard_.

She begins to squawk: the hand on her shoulder gets shifted to her mouth, muffling her outrage. The other dives into her jacket. It's there: tucked between her corset and the BDU jacket is something palm-sized: hard, smooth, and buzzing. He yanks it out and begins fumbling with it.

"It's the damned Icon," he mutters in her ear. "How do I turn it off?"

She grabs hold of his elbow and fumbles her hand down to his, where he's clutching the Icon, stabbing at it randomly with a stiff finger.

"I don't know!" Vala tries to take it out of his hand, but he's not letting it go, and just squeezes it tighter. "I didn't know you could turn it _on_!"

She gets her small nimble fingers inside his, so they're both clinging to it, squeezing and pressing at the enamel panels--and the volume drops.

"Wha?" Daniel mutters. He moves a finger tentatively, brushing against one of hers, and the sound drops a little lower. He lifts it off the surface of the artifact and the volume goes up again. "Don't let go."

"No, really?" she murmurs, and giggles a little under her breath.

Bending his head close to her ear, he says softly, "It likes it when we're both touching it, and each other. I think it must have sensors--"

"Well, we can do that," she replies into his chin.

They stand there in relieved silence for no more than a minute, hands entwined, and then Daniel swears miserably into her hair. The noise level is beginning to climb again.

Vala huffs in frustration. "More touching?"

In answer, he detaches one hand from the artifact and pats his way up her arm until it comes to rest on the bare skin of her neck--and the tone dips again, falling almost to silence. "More touching," he confirms. Bare skin only, no less. Whatever they do, it only lasts for a little while before the artifact becomes impatient and demands action. If he could only figure out how to turn it off entirely--but that isn't going to happen in the darkness, with the Brotherhood waiting about overhead. They can't even take the risk of zatting it--zats are quieter than firearms, but far from silent.

It becomes a dance of sorts: cautious movements, a finger drawn carefully along the other's skin, a chin brushed across the other's cheek, followed by a long pause until the buzz starts climbing again. Just moving isn't enough, though--the artifact is too smart for that. It wants _more_. New skin, more movement. Daniel begins to suspect there's an AI at work; again, not something they can actually deal with, under the circumstances. They don't even have a light.

The footsteps continue above their heads, accompanied by the occasional shout of alarm. Daniel guesses the Brotherhood is running afoul of the city-builders' booby-traps, not that it's helping at the moment. He's trying to think about that, trying to keep focused on the danger, because it's getting hard to remember that they're at risk for their lives. Vala has her lips pressed to his neck, one hand pushed up under his shirt, her other hand tangled with his on the artifact. His cheek is brushing her ear, his hand cautiously stroking along her neck.

They're running out of skin.

"Bzzzzt," says the artifact demandingly.

Vala drops the hand she has on his back. The buzz gets louder.

"Vala!" _What are you doing?_ he begins to ask, but the quiet click of snaps opening stops him.

"Why Daniel--you're not shy, are you?" The words are expected, but there's a tremor underneath them, one that hasn't gone away since they've been trapped in here. She moves against him, her shoulders shifting as she struggles, he assumes, out of her jacket. "Help me," she demands. "Do it fast so we don't have to do it again--"

Oh, right. Every time they have to let go of one another to take something off is another chance for the artifact to get louder.

Getting Daniel out of his tac vest and t-shirt isn't too difficult, but Vala's corset has too many straps, and they're at one point reduced to pulling it over her head fast, like a Band-Aid coming off. Finally they're gasping, hands locked together once more about the artifact, and naked from the waist up.

The buzzing had begun to approach dangerous levels, but as Daniel puts a finger cautiously on Vala's collarbone and slides it sideways, the artifact settles down, humming in what he imagines as satisfaction. "We're not getting out of this, are we?" he says in the softest tone he can manage. The air in the pit has suddenly warmed, or they've used up all the oxygen, he's not sure.

"Well, we could try," she whispers, and bites his shoulder lightly, making him jump and the artifact positively _purr_. "But it's much more fun this way, don't you think?"

She's not wrong; so he groans, and pulls her head to his. Her lips, which have smirked and pouted and driven him mad with frustration for weeks, are warm, a little chapped, and just as lush as he imagined. Not that he's been imagining them. Much. He lets his fingers smooth along the soft skin of her shoulder, and slide down her back to her waist. He's not eager for too much, yet. "Slow," he reminds her, not yet touching her anywhere else.

She sighs. "Oh, if you insist," but stiffens when a loud thump and a cry of rage echo down from the surface. "Might be a while..."

They draw it out as long as they can, and Daniel isn't sure how much of that is intentional anticipation, and how much is awareness that at some point there won't be any more they can do to keep the artifact silent--and the Brotherhood are still there. They have only been trapped here for about forty minutes. SGC search operations he's been involved in can last for _days_. He doesn't mention this.

He's pretty sure the oxygen is actually getting thin, because every moment begins to attenuate, the buzzing of the artifact and the hammering of his pulse making his head swim. The only thing that matters is the way the skin under her ear tastes on his tongue; the way her nipples stiffen when he brushes his palm across them slowly; her rasping breath in his ear. Each touch is gingerly contained, sustained as long as they can withstand it, traded one for the next. She balances delicately, her left hand locked in his right around the artifact, and licks a stripe down his chest to his navel; he returns the favor with a series of kisses along her jawline and down her neck to her collarbone, which he sucks on until she emits a low moan.

The artifact is less patient than he is, though, and the sense of urgency begins to return. They have stopped talking, communicating in gasped breaths and touches instead. When he reaches down with an unsteady hand to unsnap her BDU trousers, she nods enthusiastically, and uses her free hand to help him, kicking the pants down around her ankles. She's still yanking at them, trying to pull one of her boots up through the leg, while he opens his own trousers.

"Um," he mutters in frustration, and pauses, while the artifact buzzes in his hand. With only one free hand each, standing up seems like a bad idea, even if his back could take it--which, after sleeping on the ground for five days, it probably can't. Vala grunts in triumph and rises, apparently de-pantsed.

She somehow senses his uncertainty and leans forward to plant a smacking kiss on his chest, then swings him around so he's standing where she was. When he doesn't do anything, she sighs--he can absolutely see the eyebrow arch in annoyance--and pushes him gently backward. His calves hit something, and he realizes there's a ledge there, part of the crumbled side wall with a level surface at about knee level.

Perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but for this? More than adequate.

Daniel pushes at his trousers and his shorts; it's a delicate production with only one hand. Vala snickers softly, but uses her free hand to help--when she touches his cock he sucks in a startled breath and the artifact falls almost completely silent. They pause, startled: maybe it's done?

But it's not; only a few seconds later it starts up again. So he settles down on the stone, which is sharp-edged and cold under his ass. His left hand, fumbling around for something to lean against, comes down on something that clatters suddenly as it falls off the ledge onto the floor below. Doesn't matter what it is--he brushes impatiently at the rest of the debris, ignoring the suspicion that it's not random vegetative debris, and certainly not stones.

Vala climbs into his lap, panting hot into his face, and he's suddenly thrown back to that first meeting on the Prometheus, when she beat him up and kissed him and he wanted nothing better than to stuff her out the nearest airlock. He kisses her again and then hesitates as she hooks one arm around his neck. "Ah, do we need--"

"No, I spoke to your lovely physician some time ago," she whispers into his lips, and eases down onto him, wet and ready. "Your people have remarkable foresight." Then she locks her legs around him and begins to rock. Slowly.

"You're trying to kill me, aren't you," he mutters; but she just snorts, and nibbles on his throat. He brings their interlocked hands, nearly numb with the tension of keeping the artifact silent, to his mouth and bites gently at her wrist. She pulses once around him in response, and he groans.

She rocks, and he thrusts shallowly, his braced feet cold on the stone floor. Matching her, falling into rhythm and then out again, trying to make it last. It's been a long time for him--not that he'll admit it to her--and he suspects he's not going to last nearly as long as he needs to. He tries to stall, tries to think of something that will hold off the climax that he feels building, but his brain is fuzzy and fractured, and she feels--god, she feels good. Soft and wet and hard and firm, clenching and releasing around him, hot breathes puffing against his neck, his chest, his face. Even the thought of fiery death isn't going to keep him from exploding into her.

Speaking of which: he lifts his head to listen.

"Are you _ignoring me_?" demands Vala in a quietly outraged voice.

Daniel puts a hand over her mouth: she licks his palm and he shudders, but stays focused, concentrating. He's right--the voices on the surface have all died away, the footsteps are silent. Either the Brotherhood are preparing an elaborate trap, or they've actually left.

Vala has stilled as well, and she presses her breasts against his chest, leaning forward to peer upwards into the darkness. "They're gone?"

"I think so," he says cautiously.

"Good," she replies. "Then I can do this--" And she rears up and then grinds _down_ onto him, simultaneously clenching her muscles in a wave.

It's exactly the sort of thing she would do, after all, but he'd forgotten who he was dealing with. He comes with a choked cry, hips bucking uncontrollably; only when he reaches down and is swatted away for his trouble does he realize she'd climaxed as well. He missed it, and he wonders with a disturbing amount of disappointment whether he'll ever get to witness it in the light.

She sighs and sags forward onto him, kissing him lazily, with just enough tongue to remind him who's in charge. Her breasts are soft against his chest, still tempting despite his exhaustion. But she's a thief and a liar, and they wouldn't be trapped here if she hadn't stolen the Icon.

He kisses her back anyway, and then drops his head against the wall behind them. He figures they've got about two minutes before the damned artifact goes off again. At least with the Brotherhood gone it won't kill them.

Which is precisely the moment when the radio crackles. "SG-One-Niner to Doctor Jackson, come in."

  


*

  
"How long did they say they'd be?" Vala asks again, three minutes after the last time she asked.

It's dark enough for Daniel to roll his eyes without getting caught, but he can't argue with her impatience. The last time he was this filthy was probably after the mission to Netu, and while this trip is an improvement over that one--he didn't get any sex on Netu, for one thing, and this time none of his team was tortured--he's beginning to fantasize about the sauna in the Marines' locker room on Level 25. SG-1 has its own locker room, but Jack always bitched about the fact that they didn't have their own sauna.

"You heard Mitchell," says Daniel, shifting uncomfortably on the uneven ground. "They have a lot of teams to bring back in, and he wasn't sure when they'd get to us." They are squatting in the brush at the top of the ridge above the Stargate, having spent the previous eighteen hours moving with uttermost care in a loop back to their starting point. While Daniel is almost certain the Icon was only activated by exposure to some buried Ancient device in the ruins--he has a theory about early human settlers driving out a native race who had been in contact with the Ancients--Vala is taking no chances, and the Icon is carefully wrapped in several layers at the bottom of Daniel's pack. Vala also insisted Daniel sacrifice his BDU jacket for the cause, and the temperature has dropped noticeably since the afternoon. He therefore doesn't move away when she presses closer to his side, welcoming her warmth. "I'm pretty sure it should be soon."

But when a hand slides under his t-shirt, he twitches. "Vala..."

"What? No one is going to see us up here!" Her hand stills, though, and she pulls it out, hooking her thumb through his belt-loop instead.

He fumbles for something to say, maybe even the truth. If he can figure out what that is. "We, I, well--I just. I don't think--"

"You wish we hadn't had sex!" The outrage is mostly feigned, but after five days of round-the-clock companionship, Daniel can hear the tiny thread of hurt in her voice.

"No. No, I don't," he says, feeling his way along. "I just--it's. We're on the same team, at least sort of. And the Air Force--" He stops. Playing the fraternization card is a cheat, and she deserves better than that. He's lost count of how many times they saved each other's lives in the last week.

He frees a hand and wraps it around her waist, pulling her close, tilting his head so her hair tickles his lips. "You're a liar and a thief," he says into that dark cloud. "And I don't _like_ you all that much."

Her breath puffs against his neck as she turns her head; her hand flattens against his hip and strokes back and forth. Daniel keeps his eyes open, watching through the brambles for the blue flash of an establishing wormhole, or the torches of the Brotherhood. "That's it?" Vala asks when he doesn't anything else. "That's your reason for not having sex again?"

"Well..."

"That's stupid! We had fun, didn't we?"

"I shouldn't even be here," he finally whispers. "I should be on Atlantis, and if it weren't for you--and me--" he adds ruefully, "there wouldn't be an Ori threat, and those people on P8X-412 wouldn't have lost their freedom, and none of this would have happened."

There's a baffled silence. Daniel has to admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. But he just can't. He doesn't regret having sex with Vala in the ruins--it _was_ good, and it _did_ save their lives. But it wasn't something he would have chosen to do. Not yet, anyway, to be honest. The choice was taken away from him, the way so many other choices have been taken away from him, since he first walked through the Stargate.

_This_ he has a choice about.

He presses a kiss to Vala's temple, and reaches around to detach her from his hip. She snorts with disgust, but drops her hand. She does not, however, move away; her warm body presses against his, her hands picking at the material of her jacket. Daniel feels her body relax, and his shoulders drop in turn.

"You Tau'ri really are stupid, aren't you?"

"Well, you have to admit, the two of us together aren't exactly doing wonderful things for the galaxy at large. Or the universe, even."

"I suppose." He can positively hear her pouting, but there's no time to argue it now, because a mile down the valley he sees the vivid bloom of a wormhole forming.

As he pulls her to her feet and turns on his radio, he stops before slinging his pack onto his back. "Vala, I--"

"Daniel, I understand." There's a flash as she faces him, the dim light reflecting off her broad smile. "I promise not to tease you." He nods his thanks and toggles the broadcast switch of the radio. "Much."

  
END

  
_I know a girl mess with your mind  
She'll come to you in the summer sometime  
She'll talk about things you don't understand  
You better keep to the matters at hand  
Before the whole damn thing unwinds._  
\--John Hiatt, "Georgia Rae"  



End file.
